Collective action problem

Collective action problem, problem, inherent to collective action, that is posed by disincentives that tend to discourage joint action by individuals in the pursuit of a common goal.

Collective action occurs when a number of people work together to achieve some common objective. However, it has long been recognized that individuals often fail to work together to achieve some group goal or common good. The origin of that problem is the fact that, while each individual in any given group may share common interests with every other member, each also has conflicting interests. If taking part in a collective action is costly, then people would sooner not have to take part. If they believe that the collective act will occur without their individual contributions, then they may try to free ride. David Hume pointed out the problem in 1740, when he said in A Treatise of Human Nature that, although two neighbours may agree to drain a common meadow, to have a thousand neighbours agree on such a project becomes too complex a matter to execute.

The challenges of common goods

The problems of collective action were popularized by the American political economist Mancur Olson, who wrote in 1965 that coercion or some other device must be present in order for a group of individuals to act in their common interest. Olson suggested that collective action problems were solved in large groups by the use of selective incentives. These selective incentives might be extra rewards contingent upon taking part in the action or penalties imposed on those who do not. However, in order for positive selective incentives to work, individuals who take part in collective action must be identified; and for negative selective incentives, those who do not take part must be identified. Either way, a good deal of organization is required.

Game theory

One aspect of the collective action problem is that posed by collective or public goods. A collective good is one that is economically infeasible to exclude people from using. Hence, if a collective good—such as collective wage bargaining for an industry—is provided by an organization such as a trade union, then the fruits of that bargaining will be enjoyed by all workers, not only the trade unionists. Other workers in the industry who gain the wage increases and better working conditions provided by that bargaining will not have to pay the union dues and will free ride upon the activities of the union. In order to encourage workers to join unions, most also provide a whole host of private excludable services, such as legal advice and help during individual disputes with employers, pension schemes, holiday deals, and other such activities. Of course, setting up a union in the first place is also a collective act, and Olson suggested that setting up such organizations requires the activities of entrepreneurs who also see private benefits (such as paid employment or a political career) from forming the union in the first place. Of course, altruistic individuals may also play a part in collective action.

Collective action problems have often been represented by simple game theory. The simple, one-shot “prisoner’s dilemma” game represents a series of more complex situations, where individual rational action leads to a suboptimal outcome. It would be in the interests of both players to cooperate, but they end up not cooperating because they can see the advantages of free riding and fear the dangers of being taken for a ride. It is well known among game theorists that once the two-person game is repeated over and again, there is a multiplicity of stable equilibriums, of which some involve cooperation and some do not. If the game is played by more than two people and network effects are allowed (that is, players can see how others are playing with third parties), then one should expect both cooperation and free riding.

Thus, game theory shows that collective action is indeed a problem. People do not automatically work together to promote their collective interests, but neither is it impossible. Indeed, depending on the conditions, one should expect varying levels of collective action. In other words, there is not a single collective action problem but a host of collective action problems that share common features. Therefore, as one would expect, there are numerous ways in which people learn to overcome the particular collective action problems they face in order to work together. The tedium of organizing a school fete is not the same as the dangers inherent in taking part in collective protest or revolution, but both are collective acts subject to free riding. Described below are the types of demand-side problems that arise in collective action and the sorts of supply-side solutions that are adopted to overcome them. It will be seen that both the problems and the solutions are interlinked and interrelated.

The free-rider problem occurs wherever there is a collective good giving nonexcludability. Nonexcludability entails the free-rider problem because a person can enjoy the benefits of the good without having to pay for it (as long, of course, as the good is provided). A supply-side response is to attempt to convince would-be free riders that if they do not contribute, they will not receive the good, not through exclusion but because the good will not be provided at all.

However, prior to free riding is the recognition of one’s interests. In economic theory it is usually assumed that people have well-defined preference orderings and, hence, know their own interests. But a great deal is spent on the supply side convincing people that something is in their own interest. In that sense, the first collective action problem is the recognition that people do share interests.

The more homogenous the group, the easier it is to discover any shared preferences, the fewer the cross-cutting cleavages, and, thus, the fewer the sources of conflict within the group. Homogeneity in another sense may work in the opposite direction. If the group is heterogeneous in terms of wealth, then it may be easier to secure collective action, because the rich members may provide the goods and allow poorer members to free ride.

Incentives and disincentives of collective action

The relative costs of taking part in collective action are important. In Olson’s 1971 algebraic argument, individuals will not contribute toward a collective good if the extra benefits they accrue through receiving that good are worth less than the costs of their contribution. This argument depends crucially upon the nature of the production function. Under some production functions, Olson’s algebra is irrelevant. Furthermore, it depends upon actors relating the extra increment of the good supplied with the contribution they make toward its provision. The richer each member of the group, the lower the relative costs. It is also worth noting that, typically, consumers assign parts of their expenditure to different types of good: some for needs, such as food and clothing, some for transport, for luxury items, and so on. They may be thought to assign some part for gifts, some for charitable donations, and some toward group aims. One should expect the assignments to be dependent, in part, upon the needs items being provided first. Thus, one should expect large asymmetries in amounts set aside for group aims across social classes.

Most agree that smaller groups are easier to organize than larger ones. However, the impact of group size has perhaps been exaggerated, as other factors about groups may override this component. Group size is important in two senses. First, the larger the group, the less important an individual contribution may appear to group success. This dynamic increases the temptation to free ride. Second, the size of the group also alters the actual importance of any given contribution. The degree of perceptibility is more dependent upon interactiveness than size as such. The degree of interaction between group members is more important than group size per se. Face-to-face interaction among a small group of people may lead to subgroup mobilization, no matter how large the wider group, thus overcoming the perceptibility problem.

The opposition to a particular group’s forming is also important in the beginning of mobilization. The fact of a rival group organizing itself successfully can act as a spur to collective action. But opposing groups can also act to stultify the mobilization in the early stages. They can exploit cross-cutting cleavages within the group to try to break up the coalition of interests and can try to move the preferences of the group away from the common interest. They may also make the costs of mobilizing higher by numerous strategies, depending upon the relationship between the rival forces.

The number of other demands is also important to any specific group mobilization. Individuals have a large number of interests and causes they support. There might be a large number of charities that one might support in theory, but one assigns only a small proportion of one’s budget to charitable contributions. Organizations try to encourage members to pay by direct debit or standing orders to lock in that contribution.

A finding in experimental psychology suggests that individuals have an S-shaped utility curve. This means that losses of a given amount matter more than gains of a similar amount. This seems to lead to the finding that it is easier to mobilize people when interests currently being satisfied are threatened than to promote interests not yet satisfied.

One important aspect of the production function is created by the nature of the collective good. “One-off” goods are typified by a “step” function. Mobilization requires an action to provide the good, and, once the good has been supplied, the action is over. Goods in continual supply require continuous collective action, which may be harder to sustain in the long run.

Coordinating activities is a key issue. The degree to which coordination is required is in part dependent upon many of the previously mentioned factors. A small group, where there are few cross-cutting cleavages and costs are small, may only require coordination of activities. Larger groups, with a greater heterogeneity and relatively high costs, may require much greater coordination. The coordination is a demand-side problem that provokes various supply-side answers.

Therefore, the characteristics of the group affect its ability to mobilize its members to secure common aims. Different groups in society have different powers simply by virtue of group characteristics. Some of these characteristics are properties of the individuals that compose the group, but others are properties of the group itself rather than its individual members. Groups that are more sociable and have greater networking and interlinked subgroup organizations find overcoming collective action problems much easier than groups without those qualities. Conversely, groups that are too hierarchical may find grassroots organizing more difficult. For example, even controlling for other features, Roman Catholics in the United States seem to participate and collectively organize for non-Catholic interests to a lesser extent than non-Catholic groups. One possibility is that the Catholic church is more hierarchical, and so the civic skills needed to organize are less developed, as churchgoers rely more on the church to work on their behalf. An individual’s own power (his human capital) to collectively organize may thus be affected by the characteristics of the group of which he is a member, as well as by his own abilities.

In order to overcome coordination difficulties, some actor or set of actors may need to step in. Such political entrepreneurs may show a profit potential in coordinating collective action. This may be related to their other activities. Dennis Chong argued in 1991 that leaders of African American churches found themselves drawn into the civil rights movement in the 1960s in order to secure the continued support of their parishioners. Church leaders who were vocal in organizing for civil rights drew greater congregations than those who were silent. The competition for congregations thus led church leaders into becoming civil rights leaders too. Generally speaking, charismatic leadership is important for revolutionary activity.

Selective incentives are Olson’s solution to the collective action problem. Many organizations provide selective incentives on top of the collective good, but selective incentives cannot be the main motivation of members of an organization primarily devoted to lobbying.

One important source of mobilization occurs through joint action, where one group supports another. An organization may see benefits in creating another organization with convergent interests. Sears, Roebuck and Company, once a major U.S. supplier of agricultural equipment, long provided material support to various farmers’ organizations. Joint action taken to its furthest extreme leads to mock organizations created by one group to further the aims of another. For example, major food manufacturers in Great Britain set up several “consumers’ groups” concerned with quality of produce. Greater regulation of the quality of food is to the advantage of the larger food manufacturers. Here consumer rights may be promoted as a by-product of the interests of large food manufacturers, though some would argue that such regulatory capture is, overall, against consumer interests.

The incentives vary for activists on the supply side. Some may be entrepreneurial, setting up organizations largely for personal gain, much as entrepreneurs engage in economic activity in the private sector. Some may be less entrepreneurial and may set up an organization for group ends, still self-interested, in the sense that the “political mover” is a member of the group, but not purely for personal profit. Such political movers may prefer that some other actor perform the coordination role, but they take it on when they see that the role is not going to be performed and, therefore, the good not produced. The coordinator may be motivated by truly altruistic reasons.

Economic theory using rational-actor assumptions has shown that collective action is problematic. Game theory demonstrates that collective action is possible even without institutions supporting it. Empirical analyses of how people mobilize demonstrate the myriad ways in which collective action problems are overcome every day.